Monday Spot (5 July 2010)
“They think its all over – it is now!”
Memories!
Famous words first spoken on the BBC in 1966 and true again this year but not for the same reason. No success this time for the team, or Andy Murray, but life goes on without them. Its good to know, however, that it is never all over where God is concerned. He is patient and will wait for as long as it takes for us to acknowledge him.
What a privilege it has been in recent weeks and months to witness the enrolment of new soldiers on a regular basis. This was our delight again yesterday morning as Major Drew McCombe enrolled John Allen as a Soldier. John came to the Army a few years ago following an out of town estate ministry and has been with us ever since. He was recently bereaved of his wife, Sylvia, and now feels able to take this positive step forward in the family of friends he has found at the Corps. In his testimony John spoke of his days in the Navy which gave him a lifestyle on the wrong path. He said that it was in 1996 that he was invited to an outreach meeting at Wayfield School and was so overcome with the welcome he received that he attended the corps meeting the next Sunday. With the influential help of Recruiting Sergeant Mike Woodhouse John became an Adherent. Subsequently having suffered two strokes and the loss of wife Sylvia to cancer he confessed that he would not have been able to cope without the love shown by members of the corps. After Sylvia’s death he shared with Major Drew McCombe the regret that they had never become soldiers and yesterday’s ceremony was the result of this conversation.
John Allen
The morning meeting took the theme of ‘Making Life Work – Taking Initiative’ and songs 174 and 114 from the Salvation Army Song Book were featured together with 10 and 1013 from Songs of Fellowship. Also used was a favourite of John’s, ‘I Dare to be Different’. The Singing Company brought musical ministry with ‘The Pride Patrol’ and the Songsters also blessed us with ‘With all my Heart’. Scripture was found in Philippians 2: 1-11.
A period of worship, centered around Rublev’s ‘Icon of the Trinity’ was an important feature.
Icon of the Trinity
In his message Major Drew said:
How many of us want to make life work for us rather than against us? Perhaps society has developed a blame culture, its always someone else’s fault. We hope that ‘one day it will happen for me’. We are commencing a short series on this subject and must ask ourselves ‘do we always make excuses?’ The book of Proverbs deals with this in a number of places (it advises us to observe how ants do things, for example). John Allen has, in later life, followed through with an opportunity to do more for God and his commitment will be used by God. God can work in all of us as we are brought face to face with the Christian life. Salvation comes in a moment but expresses itself in an ongoing experience. God, the all powerful, gave up everything in the hope that we might love him. If the impact of this love has escaped you, I hope you will stop to think so that you might enjoy God’s ongoing experience. Take hold of God’s initiative because he first loved you. Don’t let life pass you by.
Majors Drew and Beverley McCombe
In the evening we joined with our friends at the Emmaus Church Centre and used songs 17 and 33 from the Salvation Army Song Book together with 27 and 493 from Songs of Fellowship. The meeting was led by Revd Brian Adams and musical contributions were received from Band (Nicaea) and Songsters (I’ve been changed)). Scripture used was from Jonah chapter 4.
Revd Brian Adams
The message was given by Major Beverley on the theme of ‘Living God’s Way’. Using scripture from Ephesians 4:17-27 as her base she said:
I want to think tonight about managing our anger. Toddlers, teenagers and others give us good examples of anger. Paul says ‘be angry but do not sin’, in other words we should not resort to tantrums. Yet sometimes it takes a great deal of effort to control our feelings. We can be reassured by the fact that God himself gets angry and we are made in his image. So anger is not, of itself, a bad or sinful emotion. If God’s anger can be righteous so can ours. There are lots of questions. What are the things it is right to be angry about? What provokes us to anger? Why were you angry? What did you do about it? Giving vent to anger often does lead us into sin and makes fools of us. It rarely goes away by itself and can have many undesirable effects upon us so we need a constructive way to manage it. When you are angry, pray! In response God may show us we are right to be angry or that we have no right at all. He will give us perspective. Our only right in response is to forgive those who have angered us. God has forgiven us everything and we must respond likewise. We have no other option.
Next Sunday morning (11 July) our meeting will be led by Kathryn Doncaster (Divisional Children’s Officer) and will take the form of Junior Soldiers‘ Day of Renewal, a time when our children are encouraged to renew their promises to God.
Kathryn
Finally we offer our congratulations to Louise Robinson who has secured her LL.B (Hons) Law Degree and will be attending Oxford Brooks University to study Law Practice in September. Well done Louise!
Louise